OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Walk Behind Lawn Mower Frames Victa Lawn Mower Frames Technique for securing axles

G’day Folks,

I have a couple of loose stub axles on the early Victas I’m recommissioning and there are a few ways I could go about securing them.

1. Weld them on

Either Mig or stick. I’d cut a relief angle/ substantial shamfer into the rear of both components and weld a ring of filler.

Benefits:

Very secure

Issues:

Damage to hard plating on axles?


2. Braze them on

I’d use Oxy/Acetylene brazing, with, probably, brass filler.

Benefits

Less heat than welding.

Issues:

May still damage Plating?

Not as secure as welding, likely to fracture with use.

3. Forge plate onto axle.

I’d keep the axle at a neutral temperature and heat the end of the mounting plate to orange heat, peen around the edge of the stub and allow shrinkage with cooling to provide additional security.

Issues:

I’d need a decent jig to ensure alignment.

I may have issues localising the heat, and I’d not want to end up with a junk axle assembly through heat migration causing the remainder of the assembly to loosen.

Arriving at the right final hardness of the mounting plate may be problematic. If I simply leave it to normalise after forging it may be too soft but I don’t own a heat treating oven so my efforts at getting the hardness right are going to be somewhat primitive. I could oil quench it and then temper it back.

Does anyone have a technique they use for repairing these that they’ve found to be successful?

Cheers

Ironbark

Hi Ironbark,
not sure exactly what it is you are trying to achieve. I replace the Victa stubs all the time because good Victa wheels are hard to come by and I always end up with reasonable wheels on 4 stroke mowers, because the motors on them usually fail much earlier than anything with a 2 stroke on it. All I do is grind the back of the stub off and punch it out. I then remove the donor stubs from the axles, usually have to put them in the lathe and turn to fit, then arc weld them back into the Victa axles. The one that does cause me grief is the stub behind the height adjuster handle, I have to remove that before I can grind the back off and weld the new stub in. Time consuming but there is not much else I can do.
I try to get the stub as square as possible but if I get one a bit off I just hold it in the vice and give it a bit of a tweak, you can never see it.
Done countless numbers this way and never a problem, bit of paint and you would never know

Thanks Norm

I’ve got a couple of mowers where the stub is flopping about in the mounting plate. I want to have them secure, square to the body and horizontal to the ground and I’d prefer to do it right the first time so that I’m not back fixing another problem in a few weeks or months time.

It sounds like you use method 1 on my list, welding the stubs back on. Which I thought would be the simplest and involve the least issues provided it didn’t mess up the plating on the axels, which I’m guessing it doesn’t.

Cheers

Ironbark

p.s. how is it that the word axle is getting autocorrected to “axel”? I’m now going to have to manually fix it.

Just run a weld around the riveted head, that is all it needs. As I said the one that can be problematic is the one behind the height adjuster handle

G'day Ironbark and Norm

Always done the same weld the back of the stub axle.

I usually just get the Arc Welder out and weld the back of the axle ,if you put too much weld on just grind it down a little.

Gently heating a hardened metal and allowing it to cool slowly will produce a metal that is still hard but also less brittle.

Sometimes I've put a few spot welds on and it has cracked off again after about 5 years so have put more weld on when that happens ,it generally won't break the weld if you have it welded all around the back of the axle .

You could cut a relief angle/ substantial shamfer into the rear of both components and weld a ring of filler. but I
don't think it's necessary to make it that strong and would be a pain getting the axle off it it ever wears out.

Put 3 or 4 small tack welds on before welding in case the axle goes cockeyed if it does straighten with a big shifter and
grind a tack weld off to straighten if it won't straighten.(this is straightening the stub axle to a right angle to the flat plate.)

After it's welded together if it has still distorted you can still straighten the stub axle with a big shifter ,you are
not bending the stub axle ,just bending the flat steel so the stub axle is in the correct location.(just a little tweak if the wheel isn't straight)

If I let the metal cool down without using water after welding it should be good as I've never had a problem
with the metal being weak after welding.

Mig or Tig would also work.

Cheers
Max.

I knew a backyard mower repairer who repaired a loose front axle stub from my VC160 mark II by drilling a hole down the middle, tapping, then bolting it back on the bracket and grinding the hex head to half it's height to allow clearance.

Thanks Max and Norm

I'm going to try that method.

MF, I thought about taking the assemblies down the road where they have a massive industrial press and getting them to give it a little “squeeze”. Pretty sure they would have laughed at me, nice blokes though they are.


Cheers

Ironbark